Sad News, Everyone: Zenos Won't Be Chasing Records At The Festival Of Speed

19.5K

Views

This one actually hurts a bit.

In the build-up to this year's Goodwood Festival of Speed, one of the bigger talking points was that track cars would finally be allowed to make timed runs up the hill climb route. At last, the many thousands of attendants would finally get to see some of the fastest point-to-point cars on sale today roar up one of the most famous stretches of asphalt in the world! That is, or so we thought. Zenos has confirmed it won't be letting the E10 R it's bringing to Goodwood set a representative time up the hill climb route.

Sandbagging at Goodwood isn't a new thing, of course. We haven't seen the McLaren P1, Ferrari LaFerrari or Porsche 918 be driven at the limit in the prior two years they've featured at the FoS, and we don't expect them to be driven at record-setting pace in 2016 either. Zenos' justification for holding back on outright pace is that it doesn't want to risk smashing up the only vehicle it's brought to Goodwood in an attempt to clinch a record. That doesn't mean Zenos won't be making life hard for Goodwood attendants who feel smug about their abilities to capture a sick panning shot. The driver of the E10 R at the Festival of Speed will need to post a mostly committed run in order to qualify for the official timed run on the Sunday.

It's also worth pointing out that Zenos' presence at the Festival of Speed is a feat in itself considering the prior scale of the firm's operation. Since introducing more powerful E10 versions, Zenos has seen a surge in sales (a lot of existing E10 S owners have part-exchanged their current car for an E10 R, in fact), with this year's allocation of 90 E10 units being accounted for up to November. Unsurprisingly, Zenos is looking at building upon its sales hit next year, with a production target of 150 E10s for 2017. Zenos is also already taking orders for the E11/E12 models that won't be production-ready until 2018! Needless to say, this little upstart company made up mostly of former Lotus and Caterham employees has a bright future ahead of it.